Construction Driven Language Processing

The [he3-sing-male-human-pron]nominal construction encodes the knowledge that pronouns like “he” (3 person, singular, male, human) function as full nominals, encoding both a referential specifier function and an objective head function (see Ball, 2005, “A Bi-Polar Theory of Nominal and Clause Structure and Function”, this proceedings). The [be3-pressing]verb construction encodes the status of “is” as the 3 person, present tense, singular form of the verb “be”. The [Ref-Ptcomp bespec Prednhead]clause construction captures the use of a reference point complement and a referential specifier (bespec) to tie a predication functioning as head of a clause to the larger discourse situation via the reference point and referential specifier. This construction is related to the basic subject-predicate form of a clause with bespec and Prednhead together constituting the predicate (which is not a distinct functional element in this construction) and Prednhead alone constituting a predication (i.e. head, and post-head complements—syntactically a VP when the head is a verb). In the case of a tensed verb without a separate auxiliary (e.g. “kicked”), the construction has the form [RefPtcomp Predhead]clause where Predhead constitutes a predicate (and distinct constituent) which encodes the tensed verb and post-head complements and Ref-Ptcomp corresponds to the subject. The [kickv-ing]verb construction captures the “V-ing” (i.e. progressive) verb form of “kicking”. The [Subjcomp kickhead Objcomp]proposition construction captures the basic relational meaning of the verb “kick” which combines with a subject and object complement to form a proposition. This construction is closely related to the basic SVO form of a clause. The [Vhead Objcomp]predication construction captures the combining of a tenseless verb head with an object complement to form a predication that functions as the head of the [Ref-Ptcomp bespec Prednhead]clause construction. The [bespec V-inghead]predicator construction captures the combining of the auxiliary verb “be” functioning as a specifier with the progressive form of a verb functioning as the head in forming a predicator. The [thespec Head]nominal construction captures the encoding of a referential specifier and objective head to form a nominal. The [thespec ballhead]nominal construction captures the encoding of “ball” as the head of the [thespec Head]nominal construction. Assuming the activation, selection and integration of these constructions during the processing of this linguistic input, the following linguistic representation is suggested: